Daily Digest 2/3 - U.S. Oil Workers Go On Strike, How To Survive A Disaster

Economy

This assortment of ‘Austrian’ economists, radical monetarists, gold bugs and bitcoin fanatics has repeatedly warned that such a massive increase in global liquidity would lead to hyperinflation, the U.S. dollar’s collapse, sky-high gold prices, and the eventual demise of fiat currencies at the hands of digital cryptocurrency counterparts.

Potential interns are also told that research into third party computers might include plans to "remotely degrade or destroy opponent computers, routers, servers and network enabled devices by attacking the hardware." Using a program called Passionatepolka, for example, they may be asked to "remotely brick network cards." With programs like Berserkr they would implant "persistent backdoors" and "parasitic drivers". Using another piece of software called Barnfire, they would "erase the BIOS on a brand of servers that act as a backbone to many rival governments."

Mr. Obama publicly ordered the end of the monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, saying he had known nothing about the effort — an admission that revealed the White House was not reviewing N.S.A. activities the way, for example, it annually reviews covert actions around the world by the C.I.A. The timing of the announcement about the new review process comes the week before Ms. Merkel is scheduled to visit the White House, where a long-debated arrangement for greater intelligence sharing between the countries is expected to be discussed.

One person who knows the answer is John Leach, a military survival instructor who researches behaviour in extreme environments at the University of Portsmouth. He has studied the actions of survivors and victims from dozens of disasters around the world over several decades (and as it happens he was present at one of them, the fire at King’s Cross underground station on 18 November 1987 which killed 31 people). He has found that in life-threatening situations, around 75% of people are so bewildered by the situation that they are unable to think clearly or plot their escape. They become mentally paralysed. Just 15% of people on average manage to remain calm and rational enough to make decisions that could save their lives. (The remaining 10% are plain dangerous: they freak out and hinder the survival chances of everyone else.)

The first hypothesis is that the present bear market is not finished and it would have another one or two legs down all the way to where it started at $300. On a technical basis, it can be defended if you believe $1,900 was the end of a bubble started in 2000. I don’t. Many other technical, but also fundamental, factors make me give this scenario a very low probability.

In 1913 the US national debt was less than $3 Billion, gold was real money, and a cup of coffee cost a nickel. By 2015 the US national debt had increased to over $18,000,000,000,000 ($18 Trillion), the gold standard was called a “barbarous relic,” most currencies had devolved into fiat paper and digital symbols backed by insolvent governments, and a Grande soy cinnamon latte, double pump, triple shot, extra hot, with sprinkles cost about five bucks.

The strike comes at an already tumultuous time as plummeting oil prices have given rise to a heated debate over the future of an industry that relies on extracting cheap and plentiful resources from the ground. This precipitous drop in crude oil prices by over 60 percent since June has caused companies to lay off workers and delay plans for expansion; what they see as the most painless means of avoiding profit cuts.

Workers are on strike at nine oil refineries and chemical plants around the United States in the largest such job action in 35 years. Members of the United Steelworkers union (USW) who are employed by more than 200 US oil terminals and pipelines as well as refineries and chemical plants struck the nine facilities on Feb. 1 after negotiations with several oil companies failed to end in an agreement on wages, safety and benefits. The contract covers 30,000 hourly workers. The negotiations had begun Jan. 21 with a settlement deadline at midnight, Jan. 31. The USW had rejected five offers by the companies lead negotiator, Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant representing several large oil companies operating in the United States, including Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. “Shell refused to provide us with a counter-offer and left the bargaining table,” USW International President Leo Gerard said. “We had no choice but to give notice of a work stoppage.”

Gold & Silver

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Market doom and gloom article made my head hurt. WTF was that, a random word generator sold as a legitimate article?

With long-term interest rates close to zero in most advanced economies (and in some cases even negative), the case for infrastructure spending is indeed compelling. But a variety of political constraints — particularly the fact that fiscally strapped economies slash capital spending before cutting public-sector wages, subsidies, and other current spending — are holding back the needed infrastructure boom.

We're broke, and no matter how cheap it is to borrow money, we're broke.